White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went full North Korea cult propagandist on Fox News, gushing that the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis has been a “resounding success.” Never mind that two Americans were murdered, violent civil conflict has reigned, and Trump’s approval has cratered. Leavitt also undercut her own spin by describing all arrested by ICE as “criminals” and insisting the operation is “targeted”—revealing she can’t tell the truth about its targeting of noncriminals because it’s so widely hated. She was further undermined by the shocking news that two ICE agents lied about an incident leading to the shooting of an immigrant, a reminder that this entire fiasco has been perpetually awash in lawless horror. We talked to Democratic messaging strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio, who explains how that shooting wrecks White House spin, why Trump’s propaganda narratives are collapsing at a deep level, why he’s in an unusually weak position, and what Democrats can do with their own narratives to seize the moment.
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